


staircase

by gummies



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:56:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21778684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gummies/pseuds/gummies
Summary: Michael Shelley opens the door, and he’s dead before it even closes behind him.Not that he'll let that stop him.
Comments: 22
Kudos: 80





	staircase

Michael Shelley opens the door, and he’s dead before it even closes behind him. Not that he’ll let that stop him. 

The corridors sprawling in front of him are long and winding. At least, he thinks they are. It’s hard to think anything, with the way his head feels like it’s full of wet cotton, and every time he blinks it's like he has to start the thought over again. It’s easier to see what’s not around him- staircases and doors and mirrors and staircases- but that hurts too. After a long moment of no time at all, he starts walking.

He’s off-balance. Each step sends rippling waves of swaying vertigo over him. He hasn’t fallen, though, so it must not be him. His ankle twists backwards with every step, and Michael finds himself walking in directions he’s never walked in before. He tries not to look. Instead, he buries his nose in the map. It’s nothing but lines and crosses. He stares at it. Stares up at the path that was in front of him at some point. Feels an utter lack of comprehension. Something clicks- like a latch snapping open and falling apart. He keeps walking.

Michael’s thoughts don’t drift. They try, and catch on little snags of words and meanings that came so easy to him an hour (a day? a minute?) before. Sentences shatter halfway through, and the shards are glass pouring through his brain and out his eyes to leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind him. He won’t need it. He isn’t getting out.

He’s supposed to- 

Did she know-

Isn’t there somewhere- 

How many doors-

He keeps walking. Eventually, he doesn’t look back down and the map is blank in his hands. It probably was from the beginning. He crumples it up and tosses it behind him. Keeps walking. Leans down and picks it up as he passes. Opens a door. When did he start opening doors? He- he doesn’t know, because that’d imply that knowing is possible- but he doesn’t doesn’t know which to open. The handles are cold on his palms, a blistering heat, and when he pulls them away from where they’re tucked into his coat he almost looks at them and doesn’t recognize what he sees.

Does this mean-

Is it already-

How long should-

Michael is standing in front of another door. He walks through and crawls back out through the dog-door. Something inside him is beginning to well up. He knows what it is, because in this place, not knowing would imply he did. His hands move of his own volition, dragging along the wood of the wall. His nails are too short to touch the walls, but they scrape up little trails of sawdust which stick to his fingers, soft and sticky. Something unlike idle curiosity urges him to reach through, and he touches his own face through the wall. He’s smiling.

What if he can’t-

Is anyone going to-

Can he even-

Seconds nearly pass. He’s made progress, in a sense. If only he had any.

He realizes, distantly, that he hasn’t moved an inch since he entered. There isn’t enough of his vision left to blur, and when he tries to feel for his hand, he finds it clutching something spongy and wet. He tries to turn to it, but he can’t see past the arm he has curled down his own throat. His reaches too far and his fingers tickle his stomach. He doesn’t laugh, but if he did, it would feel not at all strange, throat constricting and convulsing around nothing but bent skin. In fact, it might’ve been the only thing in his life that ever felt normal. Too bad he felt it.

He finds his heart. It takes a few more tries. 

Before he has to, it rips from his mouth with veins like roots and wires. They twist. If he doesn’t try hard enough, he won’t trick himself into thinking he tastes the blood on his tongue. 

There is a mirror in front of him. Silver. Gleaming. A thick layer of dust obscures the surface. The thing that is not Michael reaches forward and wipes a hand through it, leaving a solid swipe of blood. Under it is nothing but its reflection. 

It is the first time it feels pain, but it is also acutely the most painful experience it has or will ever have. Everything is suddenly very, very clear. There are no mirrors. No halls. No stairs. Just Michael. Michael, not not Michael, not even not not not not Michael. Just Michael.

It feels little pieces of it come off in flakes, and suddenly the twisting is back, and it hurts. It feels itself, twisted, cut, and molded into a terrible little shape that is too heavy and too light and there. It feels itself pressed into a neat little cookie-cutter of a human who isn’t even dead, because unlike it, he has the pleasure to no longer exist. It feels itself trying, against its own will, to comprehend. The situation it finds itself, the connotation, the- the-

Itself, itself, itself

The door opens, and Michael Shelley does not walk out.

**Author's Note:**

> shrugs.


End file.
